Odd Words February 6, 2014

& Thursday at 6 pm Octavia Books hosts a presentation and signing with Michael Murphy celebrating the release of his new book, EAT DAT NEW ORLEANS, a story filled portrait of New Orleans food culture. Emeril Lagasse said “EAT DAT is full of everthing we New Orleanians pride ourselves – incredible passion, food culture, and unique stories of the people and places that make up this great city.” Petit Fours from Bouligny Bakery will be served. (That’s Marnie Carmichael’s – Michael’s wife’s business which she launched in October 2012. She’s been featured in VOGUE, SOUTHERN LIVING, and ARCHITECTURAL DIGEST.) EAT DAT NEW ORLEANS is a guidebook that celebrates both New Orleans’s food and its people. It highlights nearly 250 eating spots-sno-cone stands and food carts as well as famous restaurants-and spins tales of the city’s food lore, such as the controversial history of gumbo and the Shakespearean drama of restaurateur Owen Brennan and his heirs.

& Every Thursday at 7 pm the JuJu Bag Cafe hosts the spoken word event Word Connections hosted by John Lacabiere. Call 504-307-9969 to sign up or for more information.

& Also at 6 pm on Thursday Maple Street Book Shop features Tulane finance professor Peter Ricchiuti, a former chief investment officer for the state of Louisiana and the host of WWNO’s popular radio program Out to Lunch, be discussing his book Stocks Under Rocks: How to Uncover Overlooked, Profitable Market Opportunities.

& This Saturday at 10 am at the Nix Library on Carrollton Avenue trisha Rezende, MFA, leads a dynamic writing workshop every month. Students produce, share, and critique texts while learning how to develop character, voice, and style. Limited to ten students. To RSVP, please call 504-596-2630.

& Saturday at 11:30 it’s Story Time with Miss Maureen at Maple Street Book Shop. This week she’ll read Cheese Belongs to You by Alexis Deacon and Viviane Schwarz. Rat Law says that if you’re a rat, cheese belongs to you. But there are exceptions. For example, if a big rat wants it, cheese belongs to him. Unless a bigger rat wants it, or a quicker one, or a stronger one. And if a big, quick, strong, scary, hairy, dirty rat wants it, well . . . where does it end? A tumble of cumulative adjectives and a frenzy of hungry critters build up to a final note of politeness in a book sure to satisfy kids’ appetites for zany humor.

& Sunday at 2 pm Garden District Book Shop hosts Alan G. Gauthreaux’s Italian Louisiana: History, Heritage & Tradition. At the close of the nineteenth century, Louisiana’s ports hosted an influx of Italian immigrants. Like so many immigrant communities before, acclimating to their new home was not easy. Though the Italian contribution to Louisiana’s culture is palpable and celebrated, at one time ethnic Italians were constantly embroiled in scandal, sometimes deserved and sometimes as scapegoats. The new immigrants hoped that they would be welcomed and see for themselves the “streets paved with gold.” Their new lives, however, were difficult. Italians in Louisiana faced prejudice, violence and political exile for their refusal to accept the southern racial mores. Author and historian Alan Gauthreaux documents the experience of those Italians who arrived in Louisiana over one hundred years ago.

& At 7 pm Saturday the TENDE RLOIN reading series presents The Third Weird Thing reading. TENDE RLOIN’s choicest reading series, featuring TOM ANDES, M.E. RILEY and BENJAMIN LOWENKRON at Kajun’s. Cold Cuts is a poetry reading interested in performance and a performance interested in reading poetry. Each reading will consist of 3 – often on the theme of 2 poets and a 3rd weird thing: the performative. But we encourage all our poets to perform and all our performances to poet.

& Sunday the Apple Barrel hosts Thaddeus Conti’s Cabaret of Poetry and Music, featuring Bill Lavender , ChickenSam, Jeff Pagano , Bernard Pearce , Thaddeus Conti and Joseph Bienvenu. The event does not have a published time but look for the weekend rundown on Facebook and Googe+ for a time when I get one.

& Every Sunday at 3 p.m. The Maple Leaf Reading Series, the oldest continuous reading series in the south, founded by Everette Maddox, features guest poets and an open mic. Poet Jacob Dilson reads from his work, followed by an open mic

& Sunday is Slam and Spoken Word Day in New Orleans. WhoDatPoets.com lists five Spoken Word shows on Sunday nights. For phone numbers with more details on all these readings visit WHODATPOETS.COM. (I stopped listing all of the events because one venue’s name forced me to limit this post for readers over 21. Check WHODATEPOETS.COM for all the latest on slam and spoken word in New Orleans.

& Speak Sunday is hosted every Sunday at 7 pm by Duece the Poet at Therapy, 3001 Tulane Avenue, also featuring live painting of the performers by C.C. Givens.

& Monday at 5:30 pm the Robert E. Smith Library hosts a free Creative Writing Workshop. Do you think in verse that could become poetry? Do you imagine characters, dialogue, and scenes? If so, in at the corner of Canal Boulevard and Harrison Avenue.

& Monday at 6 pm Octavia Books feature poet Peter Cooley reading from his book NIGHT BUS TO THE AFTERLIFE, published by the Carnegie Mellon Poetry Series. With the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans his initial subject, Cooley meditates on transience and mortality as he moves through the landscape of the Gulf South, the sky and his inner weather reflecting one another

& Susan Larson, the former book editor of the former Times-Picayune newspaper and member of the National Book Critics Circle hosts The Reading Life on WWNO (89.9 FM) on Tuesdays at 1:30 p.m. She features interviews with authors of local and national interest. Watch Odd Words on Facebook and Google+ on Tuesdays for a complete list of her guests and features.

Tuesday at 6 pm Garden District Book Shop hosts Arthur and Pauline Frommer and their new EasyGuide to New Orleans. Frommer’s EasyGuides selling for a lower price than any similar guidebook, and deliberately limited to a short 256 pages, this EasyGuide is an exercise in creating easily-absorbed travel information. It emphasizes the authentic experiences in each destination:the most important attractions, the classic method of approaching a particular destination; the best choices for accommodations and meals; the best ways to maximize the enjoyment of your stay. Because it is “quick to read, light to carry”, it is called an “EasyGuide”, and reflects Arthur Frommer’s lifetime of experience in presenting clear and concise travel advice.

& Monday at 7:30 pm the East Jefferson Regional Library Fiction Writers Group meets. The Fiction Writers’ Group is a support group for serious writers of fiction. We do not focus on poetry, essays or nonfiction. Events consist of critique sessions from group members, author talks and writing exercises. Free of charge and open to the public. Registration is not required.

& Tuesday at 7 pm the West Bank Fiction Writers Group meets at the The Edith S. Lawson Library in Westwego. Writing exercises or discussions of points of fiction and/or critique sessions of members’ submissions. Meets the second Tuesday of every month. Moderator: Gary Bourgeois. Held in the meeting Room.

& Every Tuesday night get on the list to spit at the longest running spoken word venue in New Orleans at Sweet Lorraine’s Jazz Club hosted by African-American Shakespear. Doors open at 7pm and the Mic pops at 8pm. It is $5 to get in.

& Wednesday at 6 pm Garden District Book Shop will host Nancy Horan and Under the Wide and Starry Sky. The book chronicles the unconventional love affair of Scottish literary giant Robert Louis Stevenson, author of classics including Treasure Island and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and American divorcee Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne. They meet in rural France in 1875, when Fanny, having run away from her philandering husband back in California, takes refuge there with her children. Stevenson too is escaping from his life, running from family pressure to become a lawyer. And so begins a turbulent love affair that will last two decades and span the world.

& Wednesday at 6 pm Mimi’s in the Marigny hosts The Oblivion Atlas upstairs. Big Easy Award winners Richard Mayer and Michael Martin present readings of two stories from The Oblivion Atlas, by Michael Allen Zell and louviere + vanessa. Photos from the book by will be projected. he Oblivion Atlas explores and accumulates an aviary of themes, including dreams’ time-sculpting; memory; madness; resistance; nihilism; the frequencies and trajectories of the mind; absorbing/dissolving; and infinity in a finite space. New Orleans and Louisiana remain steady companions

& The UNO Creative Writing Workshop and Department of Fine Arts will host a reading by guest poet Lara Glenum on Wednesday at 8 p.m., at the UNO Campus Art Gallery: uno2.uno.edu/maps/lakefront/ The reading will be followed by a booksigning and reception. This event, which is free and open to the public, was funded in part by Poets & Writers, Inc. through a grant it has received from Poets & Writers, Inc.

& Love is in the air at Fleur de Lit and Pearl Wine Co.’s Reading Between the Wines. The featured authors for February’s Reading Between the Wines are romance writers Farrah Rochon, Viola Russell, and Alice Kemp, plus poet Gina Ferrara. The reading will be held Wednesday, February 12th, at 6:30PM at the Pearl Wine Co. in the American Can Company. Maple Street Book Shop will be on-site selling books. You must be 21 to attend this event.

The Typist

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About Toulouse Street

Toulouse Street began as a memoir of place, subtitled Odd Bits of Life in New Orleans, an attempt to capture "the savor of the genie-soul of the place which every place has or is not a place,"* Leopold Bloom crossing Royal Street.

Over time is has grown in strange ways. It is, to borrow novelist Tim O'Brien's line: A Fiction. It is loosely based on the life of a man of late middle age racing frantically towards and away from death. Any apparently auto-biographical bits are about "me", The Typist, in the sense that the ringing of wind chimes is about the weather.

Any resemblance to persons living or dead is chronologically orthogonal.

Odd Words was birthed in 2010 as a prominent feature when the local newspaper folded its Books page and literary listings disappeared from the scene. To see your event listed there, contact odd.words.nola@gmail.com no later than Saturday of the week prior to the event.

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